To Make is to Know

Making is not only the manifestation of an idea, it also serves as a critical method for interrogating the known and unknown.

As educators, we constantly search for new ways to engage students with relevant social and cultural issues of diverse perspectives. As practicing artists and designers, we seek modes of expressions that are authentic, creative, and that have social relevance. I regard design as an interface with dimensions including time, history, and spirituality. Whether applied practically or speculatively, making through this lens yields new sources of knowledge informed by alternate epistemologies, imagination, and participation that traditional research does not afford. Making is the connective tissue that provides access to multiple ways of understanding, critical engagement, and the creations of products that serve as foci for healing, catharsis, and social change.

This talk revolves around the methods and practice of making as research in relation to three projects:

• The Slime Tech Lab, a slime mold mobile laboratory and living system that explores new futures.
  
  
• Iyapo Repository, a future resource library that houses a collection of digital and physical artifacts created to affirm and project the future of people of African descent.

• Contesting Space, a VR project that identifies challenges of displacement and gentrification and speculates solutions to build futures that are self-determined and community-driven.

These projects demonstrate how making informs research, how research informs practice, and how practice informs teaching, thus affirming that To Make is to Know.